America Über Alles

by Jack Fernley

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Jack Fernley is the pen name of a leading British television executive. Over his career he has been involved with programmes as varied as Strictly Come Dancing, Top of the Pops, Dragons’ Den, Top Gear, Doctor Who, Dancing with the Stars and The Crown. He lives in London.

  Also by the Author

  The Babylon Revelation

  With special thanks to Super Patron, Keli Lee

  Dear Reader,

  The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound. Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and ebook wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

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  Founders, Unbound

  CONTENTS

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  PART 1

  BERLIN, GERMANY 26 April 1945

  PART 2

  BUCKINGHAM TOWNSHIP, PENNSYLVANIA 20 December 1776

  PART 3

  MORRIS TOWN, PENNSYLVANIA 4 March 1777

  PART 4

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 5 August 1777

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  SUPPORTERS

  DEDICATION

  COPYRIGHT

  PART 1

  BERLIN, GERMANY

  26 April 1945

  ONE

  The second round of anti-aircraft fire almost did for them.

  The first burst had flown harmlessly wide of the left wing, but the second hit the lower side of the Fieseler Fi 156 Storch’s cockpit. The round of armour-piercing bullets cut through the machine’s flank, catching Robert Ritter von Greim’s right foot and leg, peppering him with hot shrapnel. He screamed out, involuntarily letting go of the joystick and frantically attempting to stamp out the burning metal that had struck through the boot leather and was torching his foot and calf.

  Hanna Reitsch immediately recognised the danger.

  Unstrapping herself from the jump seat, she leaned over von Greim and seized control of the plane.

  Already the plane was making a desperate, right-sided lurch to the ground; within seconds it would be crashing on to the streets of Wilmersdorf below them.

  Using all her strength, she pulled the Fieseler out of its sudden descent, parlaying to the north-east, and avoiding the smouldering ruins that ran to the edge of the Grunewald. She was little more than a kilometre from the Heerstrasse. Out of the forest, more ground fire came at them, bullets popping off the fuselage. Ahead she saw the line of the Heerstrasse and banked right to follow it, leaving the enemy fire behind.

  Von Greim moved to take back the controls, but without looking at him she barked, ‘I have this, Robert.’ Then, more softly, ‘Sit back and enjoy the ride.’ Groaning, he slumped back into his seat.

  As the street gave way to the Siegessaule, she saw the open expanse of the Tiergarten to the left. Spring was the best of times for the Tiergarten, the lush canopy of its trees sheltering marble monuments and furtive lovers, the streams along which cygnets and ducklings took their first rides, the lush flower beds springing to life – but not this year. Those once magnificent trees had been reduced to ugly, charred stumps by months of bombing and shelling; statues, bridges, all lying in ruin, the streams and flower beds polluted and filthy, the swans and geese long eaten by a starving city, young lovers separated by war and death.

  She was heading for the east–west axis, where the Unter den Linden crossed Friedrichstrasse. In the distance, the Reichstag loomed to the left, and before it the Brandenburg Gate. She eased the joystick up, straightened the plane and then gently moved the controls down, readying for her landing. The plane wobbled slightly. She knew she was moving a touch too fast, but there was little she could do. She had limited room to land and no chance of pulling up and attempting a second approach. Reitsch gambled to get it right.

  Pushing her body tight against the back of the seat, she jammed down the stick. The wheels of the Fieseler touched earth, immediately bouncing back up. With great effort, she pushed down again. This time the plane hit the ground and stayed there. The Unter den Linden was full of rubble and the wheels of the plane threw up stones and bricks into the air. She was braking hard, but her ability to control the landing disappeared when the right wheel struck a large chunk of concrete. The wheel collapsed. Immediately, the Fieseler banked to the right and the undercarriage began to rip along the road, sparks flying out.

  The plane started a wide spin; Reitsch went with it. She had no control over the Fieseler now. The momentum of the circle was pushing the plane towards a reinforced sentry post. The right wing of the plane smashed the sentry box into splinters before detaching itself. Now the plane tipped to the left, the remaining wing throwing up a cloud of mud and rocks, illuminated by sparks as it ran along the ground. Through the murky window, Reitsch saw the Brandenburg Gate coming closer and closer, until finally the nose crashed into the masonry. It crumpled up, a concertina of metal, but just as she thought it would swallow up both her and von Greim, it stopped short.

  There was a low moan from her companion and a weak whisper: ‘And that, my darling, is why you will never get to be in the Luftwaffe.’

  The three boys had watched the plane fall from the sky in their foxhole on the edge of the Tiergarten. From the insignia, they saw it was one of theirs, but as they scrambled towards the smoking remains, they were surprised to see a woman pulling a man out of the cockpit.

  ‘It’s Hanna Reitsch!’ the oldest boy shouted.

  ‘Who?’ asked one of the others, as they ran towards the wreckage.

  ‘The greatest girl pilot in the Reich. It is you, isn’t it, Frau Reitsch?’

  She eyed him up. He was no more than thirteen, and the other two looked even younger. They wore street clothes, dirtied by months of aerial bombardment, a swastika armband the only nod to a uniform. So these were the last defenders of Berlin, boys who should have been at school. The Volkssturm in all its glory.

  ‘I am, well spotted. Boys, I need your help. The general has been injured. Come, let’s not mess about, I need your help here.’

  The boys ran round the plane and did their best to help her pull von Greim out of the Fieseler.

  ‘I saw you when you flew that Fa-61 in the Deutschlandhalle, in thirty-eight, my papa took me,’ the oldest boy said.

  ‘Yes, I remember. That was a glorious day. Robert, let me take this boot off.’

  Von Greim winced in pain as she unbuckled what remained of it, most of the leather having been burned away. His foot was badly scorched, almost charred in places
.

  ‘My papa was a pilot too, in the Luftwaffe. The English shot him down. We’ve never seen anyone land a plane on the Unter, have we, lads? Did you land it, Frau Reitsch?’

  She nodded her assent.

  ‘Can you walk?’ she asked von Greim.

  ‘I, ah, it’s just some small burns, I’ll be fine,’ he said before putting his blackened foot on to the ground. ‘Aagh!’ The scream was involuntary – so too the buckle of his body as he fell towards the ground, stopped by Reitsch’s outstretched arms.

  ‘It’s not just burns. There’s shrapnel in there. We need to get it out. Before you lose the foot. No, you can’t walk.’

  ‘Then I’ll crawl to the Chancellery.’

  Reitsch turned to the boys. ‘You boys, you’re members of the Volkssturm, yes?’

  ‘We are Frau Reitsch, the Volkssturm Mitte Group. We’re here to defend the Reichstag from the Communist barbarians. We will fight to the death!’ said the oldest boy.

  ‘To the death!’ echoed the other two.

  ‘What with?’

  They looked at each other.

  ‘With whatever we can get our hands on!’ shouted the oldest again as the other two cheered.

  ‘That’s the spirit. The Reich will triumph if everyone has your attitude. What are your names?’

  ‘Karl, Karl Dahrendorf. And this is Wilf, my cousin, and our friend Paul. Are you going to the Chancellery to see the Führer?’

  Reitsch looked at von Greim and he replied, ‘We are. The Führer sent a telegram asking us to come to see him and – as you know – we always have to obey the Führer.’

  ‘Heil Hitler!’ Wilf said, shooting his arm up.

  ‘Heil Hitler,’ von Greim replied, a thin smile across his pained lips. The smile was interrupted by the explosion of a shell in a neighbouring street. Reitsch noted that none of the boys flinched, let alone paid it any attention.

  ‘Boys, we need to reach the Chancellery as soon as possible, but we need to help the general, he can’t walk.’

  ‘We have a car!’ said Karl proudly. ‘We captured it yesterday.’

  ‘You captured it?’

  Paul spoke up. ‘It was our reward.’

  ‘Your reward?’

  ‘Yes, our reward for telling the Feldgendarmerie about Genscher the grocer’s son; he was a deserter and his father was trying to protect him. They gave us the Volkswagen.’

  ‘Where is this Volkswagen?’

  ‘Outside his store.’

  Reitsch and von Greim exchanged a smile. ‘And where might that be?’

  ‘Oh, just off Friedrichstrasse. Come on, I’ll take you there.’

  ‘Won’t be long,’ she said to von Greim.

  ‘Don’t worry, Paul and Wilf will protect me,’ he said with a further smile.

  Reitsch and Karl jogged down the pockmarked street. The light was lowering now. It must be about seven-thirty, she thought. For the first time she was able to get a sense of Berlin as it was, a city under siege. She had last been here a little over a year ago, just after the terrible bombings of March 1944. Then she had thought that there was not much more the city could take, but the bombs had continued to fall for a year, night after night of devastation, with barely a break. And then the last month had brought a fresh round of annihilation. Nothing had been spared, it seemed. But it wasn’t the ghostly half-destroyed buildings that struck her; it was the acrid, fume-laden air, dark with smoke. As they ran through the streets, jumping over rubble from fallen buildings and the debris of homes long lost, she realised that the constant grittiness in her mouth was because the air was thick with masonry. It seemed as if the buildings were dissolving into the atmosphere, taking the life of the city with it, soon to leave nothing but memories and apparitions behind. A falling shell rudely interrupted her reverie.

  ‘They’ll be coming again soon,’ Karl shouted. ‘They send Katyusha rockets first, then the proper shells come. But there’s no planes now. Not for five nights. Because the British and the Americans are letting the Russians in. Cowards. Wait till we get them here, on our streets. Look, there it is.’

  The boy pointed to a grey Volkswagen. Amid the rubble and the destruction, it was oddly perfect, the thin sheet of dust across it like wrapping paper around a present. It was parked outside the grocer’s store with its windows broken, its shelves empty. It had been looted. Outside, from a lamp post, two bodies hung, just a few feet off the ground. From one a hastily written sign hung from the neck: ‘Wer kumpft kahn sterben. Wer sein Vaterland verrat mufs sterben. WIR MUSTEN STERBEN!’: ‘Whoever fights can die. Whoever betrays his Fatherland must die. We had to die!’

  ‘The Genschers,’ the boy said without emotion. ‘Look, the keys are still here!’

  ‘Then we better go for a ride,’ she replied, barely giving the Genschers a look.

  It was only a matter of a few minutes’ drive to von Greim. They put the general in the front passenger seat, the three boys squeezed into the back and Reitsch drove. Shells had started to fall intermittently in greater numbers, the roads were strewn with everything from fallen masonry to upturned carts, but it did not take long to drive from the crash site to the Reich Chancellery on Vossstrasse.

  ‘Will you introduce us to the Führer, General?’ Paul asked.

  ‘The Führer is always busy, he has little time for niceties. He has the Army, the Navy, the Luftwaffe, the defence of the Reich to organise. I can’t think any other man could handle such responsibility,’ von Greim answered.

  ‘Tsch, General. I am sure the Führer would only be too honoured to meet such brave defenders of Berlin as these boys.’

  ‘They say that General Wenck and the Twelfth Army are no more than a day away from breaking though the Russians and then we’ll see the Communist swine off for good,’ Paul again.

  Reitsch stared straight ahead. Von Greim hesitated. ‘He is a great general and the Twelfth Army is one of our finest armies . . . if anyone can do it, it will be General Wenck. The Führer tells us he will be here soon, so we must believe he will.’

  Reitsch stopped the car abruptly to the left of a heavily sandbagged gun placement in front of the Chancellery’s large brass doors. She swung open the car door and called out to the four troops manning the post: ‘Heil Hitler! I am Hanna Reitsch, holder of the Iron Cross First Class. I am here with Generaloberst Ritter von Greim, ordered by the Führer himself to come for an urgent conference. The Generaloberst is injured. I need you to come quickly to help him into the Chancellery!’

  The soldiers looked at each other, confused. They had strict orders not to abandon their post, but the insistent tone of the woman intimidated them.

  ‘What are you waiting for? Come on!’ she screamed, getting out of the car.

  The men now ran forward and made to pick up von Greim, carrying him quickly from the car into the Chancellery, Reitsch following. As they reached the doors, Reitsch stopped. Karl, Wilf and Paul were standing by the Volkswagen, mutely.

  ‘Hey, boys, I thought you wanted to meet the Führer, what are you waiting for?’

  She saw the smiles break out on the boys’ faces, but her pleasure was disturbed by a low, whining sound. She knew what it was. She threw herself to the ground before the shell arrived. There was a torrent of noise, and then dirt and concrete formed a heavy cloud, small remnants of the street paving dropping on her body, a cruel hailstorm. She slowly raised herself. The Volkswagen had disappeared, replaced by a five-metre-wide crater. Of Karl, Wilf and Paul, there was no sign they had ever existed.

  TWO

  ‘Dear Generaloberst, Hanna!’

  They were in Ludwig Stumpfegger’s medical room, deep in the bunker underneath the Chancellery. Von Greim lay on a canvas bed, his wounded foot had been treated by the surgeon, painkillers had given him respite. The door flew open and the ermine-clad figure of Magdalena Goebbels entered. She embraced Reitsch warmly.

  ‘Magdalena, how are you? The children, are they with you and Joseph?’

  ‘They are, dear
Hanna. They are the pride of the Reich. They take it all so well; they understand the sacrifices that have to be made. If the rest of the nation were so bold and brave, we would not be in this terrible mess. Cowards, cowards everywhere, those old Prussians in the army have betrayed the Führer. There are even’ – her voice moved into a softer register – ‘traitors here in the bunker. Some of them have started to run already. We haven’t seen Fegelein for two days.’

  ‘Probably holed up with one of his whores in that place he has over at Charlottenburg,’ von Greim joined in.

  ‘Generaloberst, I heard you had been wounded. You are always so dashing, so brave. You have raised everyone’s spirits by coming here. The Führer will be overjoyed. But your leg?’

  ‘Ach, these are nothing,’ he replied, addressing his bandaged leg and foot. ‘Scratches, my dear, mere scratches. Herr Stumpfegger and his nurses sorted it. You should thank Hanna we’re here; she landed the plane.’

  ‘Really? You landed it? Hanna, you must tell me everything, and the children, they will be so excited to see you again.’

  There was a sudden commotion outside the door. The door opened again, there was a pause, and in came a small, shrunken figure. It took a second before both von Greim and Reitsch recognised the man standing before them.

  ‘Mein Führer,’ the general said, attempting to stand.

  ‘Dear Generaloberst, please, stay. It should be I bending my knee to you. You came. You both came. Dear Hanna,’ he reached out to take her hand and kissed it.

  She noticed his shaking left arm, the result of the treacherous assassination attempt the previous July. His voice sounded weak, exhausted, his face ashen, his eyes rheumy, with pain running through them. Such sadness, she thought.

  ‘My Führer.’ Reitsch felt tears welling in her eyes.